My wife and I have entirely different tastes in furniture. I really enjoy the looks of modern furniture; my wife prefers traditional. It has been very interesting to see how eclectic our house looks with the mix and match furnishings that are in each room. At least I know one thing is for sure, if we split up we wouldn’t have many arguments over the furniture; I’d get all of the modern stuff, the platform beds and the wide screen tv. She’d get everything else.
It’s funny to see the expression on her face when I bring something new home that I want to put in the house. She doesn’t want to hurt my feelings because she sees how excited I am about my “find.” But I can tell by the way she pauses before speaking and the expression on her face that she really doesn’t want what I brought home. I wonder if I’m acting out some passive aggressive feelings when I do that!
I’m really looking forward to the party we’re planning to have this Labor Day weekend. Over the past several months we’ve lined up a DJ and a professional belly dancer to entertain our guests, bought several canopy tents, new Barbecue tools and cleaned up and tuned up the propane grill that we bought last year.
My wife bought a new outdoor swing that has an awning over the top of it and cup holders in the arms. She’s been wanting one of those for a few years now, and was using the party as an excuse to buy it. I wasn’t very happy about it at the time, but it sure is more comfortable than the folding chairs we’ve been using the past few years.
Now the countdown begins. I’m looking forward to a great time!
I saw a story on the TV last week that was addressing the issue of how important it is to have a mailbox that has your information on it that is easy to read, especially at night. It seems that there are a good amount of mailboxes that are preventing the police, ambulance and fire fighters from getting to where they need to be in an emergency situation. This could be a life or death situation that could be prevented if more people made sure that their mail boxes were set up with easily read information.
I know that in the city that I grew up in the city had the street addresses painted on the curbs to help with this type of issue, but I imagine that with all of the budget cut backs most places can’t afford to take on the cost of something like that. So it is up to the individual resident to make sure that they properly display the numbers, and for their own good.
Since we have been having such extreme heat with little rainfall that people are turning to rain water barrels to harvest water for their yards and gardens. It seems that rain harvesting has become a positive effort to help the huge “Green” effort that is going on these past few years. You can find some pretty interesting rain barrels for sale on the Internet. Amazing the variety of rain barrels that have come on the market for today’s rain harvesters.
These dry summers are really starting to become a struggle each year. Mother Nature is certainly not happy with us. Winter was hard and then we went straight into the 90’s and higher. We didn’t even get one day of nice spring weather. I can only hope that we get some type of fall weather before the snow start falling once again. Next thing you know it is going to be the holidays and all that goes along with that each year. Isn’t that a pleasant thought to think of right now?
Guest post written by my friend Will Blackson
I moved to a southern state to avoid the horribly cold winters I have endured for 30 years of my life. I figured this was going to be great since I would be outdoors most of the year, I really wouldn’t have much need for Internet and cable services like I needed when I lived up north.
Boy was I wrong. Okay so here’s the deal, some of the year, yes it is just gorgeous, and sunny. Then it doesn’t get frigid cold, it goes the opposite way and gets boiling hot. So hot indeed, you cannot enjoy the outdoors at all. Inside I go again, now with central airbecause this is a must have. Now that I am stuck inside again, well its time for cable.
You really cannot rely on rabbit ears in this rural community, you can’t get a signal. You have to have cable to be able to watch a show. I called the cable company and guess what? They are actually pretty fast at getting out right away, thank goodness. I informed them that I have a computer and they asked me if I wanted a Clear TV Bundle. They explained how it is always cheaper to do cable and internet bundles together the first time, although the cable company can add a service into a bundle at any time. The cable company provided all the tools I needed to get hooked up. And having one bill to pay is just awesome. The more you can bundle the more you save in the end. I love this service and it is very convenient for me. They were fast, on-time, and courteous to do this all on the same day. Thank goodness for bundles, you need them no matter where you live.
This is a guest post by Jones Baker
Several months ago, I was channel surfing on the satellite TV at my office we got from directv for corporations looking for something good to watch. A channel that I scanned quickly past caught my eye and I had to turn it back. At the time I skipped over it, what appeared to be a man in a graveyard was apparently fighting a zombie or something with a shiny chrome knife. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I’m a big fan of zombie movies. With this vision passing quickly by my eyes, you can easily understand why my interest was peaked.
Well, when I landed back on the channel, it was exactly what it appeared to be and I thought to myself that I finally found something really good on. The surprise to me was that it was on a regular channel and not on a premium channel. The name of the show is “Supernatural” and it is by far the best science fiction TV series on the air today.
The show follows two brothers named Dean and Sam that are demon hunters. They travel all across the United States looking for demons to fight and send back to the dark realm. All the while, demons and a few angels are chasing after Dean and Sam trying to stop them. Dean and Sam are on a mission to stop the war between Heaven and Hell by all means necessary and the angels and demons don’t want them to stop it. The angels believe that this war must take place in order to finally put Lucifer to rest. The demons simply desire to take over the world. Lucifer has even made a few special appearances. The great thing about this show is that it is so well wrote and directed, it doesn’t look like the normal ugly, brutal demons you would expect and the angels don’t even have wings. Very good show and I highly recommend watching at least one episode to give it a try.
My family and I now have a normal Thursday night ritual. Pop a bag of popcorn and settle in to watch Supernatural.
When we first bought this house, we knew that we were going to want to do a little bit of remodeling down the road. Well, we’ve done a little bit here and there, and now we are taking a look at what we can do with the kitchen without spending too much money. Kitchen remodeling is a high-budget project! But fortunately I think I can do quite a bit of the work myself. Instead of replacing the cabinets, I’m going to take off the doors and repaint them and replace the knobs.
I’d like to buy two undermount kitchen sinks to increase the efficiency of the kitchen. My wife is always telling me that we should have extra sinks in the kitchen, to accommodate several people cooking. Since we both like to cook, I think that is a great idea! They don’t have to both be full sized, but an extra sink would be fantastic!
This is the time of year when my wife and I start seeing advertisements for flower and garden shows. We have made it a tradition to go to them if it all possible. We set aside the day and drive to the show and take our time and walk around the displays. There are usually some really spectacular landscapes put up! After we go through the landscape displays, we like to go through the vendor area. The vendor area is full of trade show booths filled with all sorts of goodies. Some are actually garden related, but some are just food, or crafts. That’s OK, though. The food vendors usually give away free samples! And my wife enjoys looking at the crafts and getting ideas on expanding her own crafty interests!
Most of the booths are very well appointed with table skirts. A few are not, however, and I have to say that those tables really look naked in comparison to those that do! Some of the larger vendors that sell equipment go all out with the addition of banner stands and pipe and drape dividers. I always find it interesting to see who is doing what with their display booths.
I spent the day getting the snow blower and my tractor ready to go for tomorrow. According to the weatherman we will be getting a record amount of snow overnight and over the weekend. I’m rather excited about that; I have had this snow blower for two years and only used it once! I pulled all of our cars off to the side of the driveway and pulled the tractor off of the trailer and into the garage. With the Subaru having four brand new studded snow tires, and our truck with four wheel drive and new snow tires I am feeling pretty secure about our ability to get out and about if we need to. Now I just hope we don’t lose electricity!
My niece and her fiance have been looking at a apartment. They haven’t signed the lease yet, but they are pretty sure which apartment they are going to be taking, and now they need some furniture to put in it! They’ve been asking other family members for hand-me-down home furnishings to help them out, and they are getting quite a bit of luck with that, but there are still a few items that they are going to be needing!
I’ve also suggested that they check out the local thrift stores and freecycle, but there are a few items that they want to get brand new. I’ve suggested that they go to some local furniture stores and see what they like before buying something online. I’d like to make sure that the brand that they get is going to be comfortable and well-made. I’d hate for them to buy something sight unseen and then be upset because it is not the quality or comfort level that they want to have!
Ealier today I noticed a couple of very large wasps nests in a stand of trees about forty feet away from our back yard deck! These seem to be at least as large as a football! My wife asked me if a wasp spray would reach them to kill the wasps. I told her that I just wanted to shoot them down with a shotgun! My wife thought that might not be a very smart idea, thinking that would rile them up and I’d get stung. I assured her that the wasps had all vacated the nest for the winter. She asked me where do they go? I have to admit that I don’t know! That would be an interesting thing to google and learn about!
Over the past week I’ve had to go to the big orange home improvement store several times to pick up a few things for a project I’m doing at home. I’ve spent about $2000 there just this past week! But I’ve noticed that when I go there if I have a question about something I have a very hard time finding anyone to answer my questions! I don’t know if they are understaffed or if they are hiding from me! Oh wait a minute – I remember now – they ARE understaffed! According to the Internet they are hiring at that store, but when I go in and talk to them they tell me that there has been a hiring freeze on for several years! So THAT’s why I can’t find anyone to wait on me!
Well, I was given a $10 coupon to use at the big blue home improvement store that is at the opposite end of town, and I decided that I would go there today to pick up a few things that I needed. They had employees all over the place! And they were all stopping to say hello and ask me if I needed any help! And it was wonderful! They did help me find some of the things that I needed, and they helped me to load the stuff in my car. I’ll be going back there again the next time I need home improvement supplies!
Pumpkin patch time! Today we went to the local pumpkin farm to pick out our pumpkin. They were giving free hayrides and selling hot apple cider. The kids went a little crazy trying to pick out their pumpkins. I told them that they could each pick out a pumpkin for themselves and then we would bring them home and decorate them with markers. We will be decorating them tomorrow!
My wife has never liked the kitchen sink in this house. It is badly scratched up and because of that condition, it is difficult to clean. She asked me to help her find a reasonably priced undermount stainless steel sink to buy to replace it. Well, I was resisting the project; I thought that replacing the sink would be a big ordeal, and a huge expense. But the prices of sinks at the mrdirectint.com have made me reconsider the project; we may very well replace that sink after all!
I understand that fruit flies come into the house via the fresh fruit that we buy at the grocery store, but I don’t understand how they travel from the kitchen area all the way into the bathroom. It just doesn’t make sense to me that we didn’t have any kind of drain flies in the bathroom until we brought fruit in the house and started seeing fruit flies around the compost bucket! My wife tells me that they are just fruit flies, and there really isn’t a whole lot we can about them if we want to keep bringing fruit into the house. That’s really too bad, I enjoy the fresh fruit, but I hate the fruit flies!
Last weekend I went to a new flea market that recently opened up in the area. It used to be a roller skating rink years ago, and the building has been sitting empty for at least the past ten years. Anyway, the building owners recently opened it up as a large indoor flea market, and I decided to take a look-see at what the vendors had for sale there.
I’ve always had a penchant for Lockers. They are just a really great way to store items in my garage and basement. I even like to have some nice looking Wood Lockers near the back door since we don’t have a coat closet there. So I went to the flea market, wondering if there might be some Lockers for sale that I might like to pick up and use at home.
Unfortunately, the only lockers that they had was a really beat up School Locker and some beat up Gym Lockers. Now I don’t mind a little ding here and there, it adds character! But these were really badly trashed! So I decided that I didn’t really like what they had there this time.
My sister called me last night to tell me that when she dropped in on Mom she found he sitting in her favorite chair with an ice pack on her hip. She had fallen down again and had stayed on the floor for a couple of hours in pain before she could get up. For the past year I’ve been trying to convince my sister to sign Mom up for a Life Alert service so that when something like that happens the Life Alert service will call for help and she won’t have to be lying there in pain for more than a few minutes.
My sister and mother both have been resisting the idea of subscribing to a Life Alert service. They just don’t want to spend the money. But I know for a fact that my mother can easily afford it; she’s just being cheap! So I’m going to talk to my wife about us subscribing to it on her behalf and paying the fees. Mom’s life and safety is more important than saving a few dollars!
I was surprised this morning to see a lot of crows eating some of the over-ripened squash that I threw out in the back yard last night. I was thinking that the deer would enjoy it! I mentioned it to my wife that I was surprised to see the crows eating it and she was surprised that I was surprised. She said “Well, why wouldn’t they eat it? They are scavengers after all!”
To be honest, I don’t really know why it surprised me. Maybe I just expected the squash to be already gone by sunrise! After all, we DO have a small herd of deer that frequent our yard every day!
Today I was driving past a house that was completely enclosed in plastic. I knew that the house was marked for demolition, so I was surprised to see it wrapped in plastic like that. Apparently it was determined that as part of the demolition process, there was some asbestos removal that needed to be done. I can remember how upset my parents were when it became public knowledge that exposure to asbestos could cause peritoneal mesothelioma or pleural mesothelioma. Asbestos has been widely used as insulation in a lot of our public buildings, and in homes.
It used to be thought to be a safe product, but so many people who have come into contact with it have later been given a mesothelioma prognosis that it has become evident that it is not a safe product at all! And this is a very serious cancer that has killed many people. I was amazed recently to learn that it is still in production somewhere in Canada! I would have thought that it would have been banned by now!
I went shoppTecing with my wife today and ended up buying a new cordless phone. This one comes with three handsets, and has talking Caller ID! I had never heard of talking Caller ID before, and I think that will be a great feature for us because our phone rings a lot of the time when it really isn’t convenient to stop what we are doing to go look and see who is calling! That durn things seem to ring at dinnertime almost every night! We don’t like to just ignore it, in case it is an emergency, but most of the time it’s a salesperson that we really don’t want to talk to during dinner! So this will be great – to be able to just keep eating without getting up if we hear that it is not a family member or a friend calling!
General life, Home and Garden, Relationships, Shopping | Dean | 
September 2, 2010 10:41 pm | 
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